“I don’t have any bodies, Mr Dunfield.”

Again, I swallowed and said, “But Jeanette Garland and Susan Ridyard have been missing for over…”

“You think you’re the only cunt putting that together, you vain little twat,” said Oldman quietly, taking a mouthful of tea, eyes on me. “My senile bloody mother could.”

“I was only wondering what you thought…”

Detective Chief Superintendent Oldman slapped his thighs and sat back. “So what have we got, according to you?” he smiled. “Three missing girls. Same age, or near enough. No bodies. Castleford and…”

“Rochdale,” I whispered.

“Rochdale, and now Morley. About three years between each disappearance?” he said, raising a thin eyebrow my way.

I nodded.

Oldman picked up a typed sheet of paper from his desk. “Well, how about these?” he said and tossed the paper over the desk on to the floor by my feet, reciting by heart: “Helen Shore, Samantha Davis, Jackie Morris, Lisa Langley, Nichola Hale, Louise Walker, Karen Anderson.”

I picked up the list.

“Missing, the bloody lot of them. And that’s just since the start of ‘73,” said Oldman. “A little bit older, I’ll grant you. But they were all under fifteen when they went missing.”

“I’m sorry.” I mumbled, holding out the paper across the desk.

“Keep it. Write a bloody story about them.”

A telephone buzzed on the desk, a light flashed. Oldman sighed and pushed one of the white cups across the desk towards me. “Drink up ‘fore it gets cold.”

I did as I was told and picked up the cup, drinking it down in one cold mouthful.

“To be blunt son, I don’t like inexactitudes and I don’t like newspapers. You’ve got your job to do…”

Edward Dunford, North of England Crime Correspondent, off the ropes with a second wind. “I don’t think you’re going to find a body.”

Detective Chief Superintendent George Oldman smiled. I looked down into my empty teacup.

Oldman stood up, laughing, “See that in your bleeding tea-leaves do you?”